Even Einstein Would Get Old After The Trip

Even Einstein believed that time travel was possible. He theorized time as being relative and that with the right advancements, humans could travel through time. What would you need to travel through time?

Is Time Travel Possible

It’s a fantastic idea, time travel. Is it achievable? That’s a subject of debate in the scientific community. Let’s take a look at what one of the world’s most famed scientists believed and what it would take to achieve time travel.

Theory Number One:

Noted physicist, Albert Einstein, believed that time travel could be achieved if you had the right devices. Not being a physicist, understanding the science behind traveling through time may be next to impossible.

Einstein and Newton, as well as others, aren’t always in agreement. Einstein believed that time was relative. In Einstein’s theory, he believed that if you were to travel through space-time at the speed of light, time around you would slow compared to that of time back here on Earth.

Unlike the famous adventures of Captain James Kirk and the crew of the USS Enterprise, there doesn’t appear to be a sound theory that would return a time traveler to the past. No, Kirk and Company couldn’t have gone back to the 1980s to pick up George and Gracie and bring them to the 23rd century.

In Einstein’s theory, one could travel with a very fast spaceship, getting older at a much slower rate than someone on Earth. At the speed of light, going out far enough and returning from a fixed point, those aboard the ship could conceivably come back and years, even centuries, have passed.

Theory Number Two:

The second theory postulated by Einstein regarding time travel requires some of the same components but approaches time travel differently. Einstein believed that time passes differently for people and things that are subjected to an intense gravitational field.

Einstein believed that stars and galaxies bend space and time. In his theory, gravity is the bending of space and time. Not pushing the laws of physics to their limits, it is difficult if not impossible to achieve time travel. Imagine what would happen if we pushed the laws of physics. Oh my!

If we could get there, in a ship large enough, with enough power to maintain its position near a black hole, according to Einstein the minutes, hours, and days we would be there studying the black hole would equal to longer periods outside of the gravitational field. What might be months studying a black hole could be years, even centuries, on Earth.

Experiments on Earth have concluded that time travel is indeed real. It is a real thing, despite not being as fabulous as rocketing to the end of a road in a Delorean and going ‘Back to the Future.’ In real life, under the right conditions, it’s been shown that you can experience time at a different rate than 1 second per second. Where that might go someday is the stuff of dreams and could be the future of science.

Traveling at the speed of light could make year-long journeys in space take hours. It could open up the door to a new level of space travel and exploration, helping humanity to reach out further into the universe than thought possible. What would we need to achieve such aspirations?

Through it all, traveling to the past doesn’t seem possible, or practical. Changing one thing in the past could in theory wreck the future, or your present. Most of the credible theories point to traveling forward as the only way to travel through time.

Things Needed For Time Traveling

Reading the theories, particularly those of Einstein's, it’s clear that there are certain prerequisites for time travel. A mission to travel through time would require:

1. A spaceship capable of traveling faster than the speed of light, or light-speed travel.
2. A spaceship power source capable of generating enough power to maintain a position near a black hole without being sucked in and crushed by gravitational force.
3. A ship capable of enough power that it could carry supplies for long-term exploration. And,
4. A crew crazy enough to venture out into space, risking the reality that if they’re successful, much of the world will have changed dramatically before they would come home.

Final Thoughts On Time Travel

To say that time travel would be exciting is an understatement. Imagining what could be done and what we could see if we traveled through time is scarily exhilarating.

However, with so little known about time travel, and the rules of physics still applying, would you be able to return to the home you knew? Time travel will someday be like space travel if we ever get to that point where it’s reasonably achievable. To those that go off on that grand adventure, they’ll make history, but will it be recorded in our time as a success, or a failure that remains that way until they’ve returned hundreds of years later?

What do you think? Is it achievable? Would you venture out into the fabric of space-time, not knowing when or if you would come back? Would you want to come back, or live like Buck Rogers in the 25th Century?